Archive

Archive of Education Weekends

2016

The Presenters, 2016.

Don W. Barden

Don Barden is a classically trained economist who earned his M.B.A. in Global Technology Management and International Business with an undergraduate B.B.A. in Economics and Finance. His doctoral studies were in Finance. He resides in Atlanta, Georgia and is fluent in international business affairs. As an author, speaker, advisor and corporate executive, Don Barden’s counsel is highly sought after by some of the world’s most successful businesses. His experience and record-setting sales success have drawn him to corporate and political leaders who want to tap into his real-world experience in order to move their organization to higher levels of sales and cultural achievement. He is highly noted for his ability to see “three sides” to every coin. He also serves as the past Board President for The Summit Counseling Center in Atlanta, Georgia, a unique multidisciplinary, multi-specialty personal and family counseling center that provides over 8,000 hours of counseling each year. Additionally, he is a leading advisor to several private schools, businesses and faith-based organizations.

Dr. Sanjiv Chopra

Dr. Sanjiv Chopra is a best-selling author, speaker, and teacher. He regularly lectures on well-rounded health to public audiences. Dr. Chopra was elected as a Master of the American College of Physicians in 2009, an honor bestowed to only a select few individuals for being “citizen physicians, educational innovators, scientific thinkers and humanists who inspire those around him or her and sets the standards for quality in medicine.” He is Professor of Medicine and, previously, Faculty Dean for Continuing Education at Harvard Medical School. He also acts as a Senior Consultant in Hepatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is the James Tullis Firm Chief, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

He has received a number of other notable awards, including the American Gastroenterological Association’s Distinguished Educator Award. In 2012, he was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for “exemplifying outstanding qualities in both one’s personal and professional lives while continuing to preserve the richness of one’s particular heritage.” Dr. Chopra’s book, Dr. Chopra Says: Medical Myths and Facts Everyone Should Know, co-authored with Dr. Alan Lotvin, was published in January 2011. It has received wide acclaim and has been translated into multiple languages.

Dr. Chopra, while serving as the Faculty Dean for Continuing Education, led the most robust academic Continuing Medical Education enterprise in the world, reaching out to 80,000 clinicians in more than 160 countries each year. This included seven annual Current Clinical Issues in Primary Care (CCIPC) conferences held in collaboration with UCLA,Johns Hopkins, Baylor College of Medicine, University of Miami, Northwestern University and Columbia Presbyterian College of Physicians and Surgeons. His most recent book, Leadership by Example: The Ten Key Principles of all Great Leaders was published by St. Martins Press in May 2012. It has received advanced praise by many leaders in the United States and abroad.

Dr. Sharon Dirckx

Sharon Dirckx is an Academic Tutor at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (OCCA). Originally from a scientific background, she has a Ph.D. in brain imaging from the University of Cambridge and has held research positions at the University of Oxford, UK and the Medical College of Wisconsin, USA. Sharon is an OCCA Alumna, and graduated from OCCA in 2005 during its founding year. She is invited to speak and lecture in a variety of contexts across the UK, including the 2014 Veritas Forum at the University of Oxford.

Sharon has also appeared on BBC Songs of Praise, Justin Brierley’s programme, ‘Unbelievable’, on Premier Christian Radio, BBC Radio 2 Good Morning Sunday with Clare Balding and BBC Radio 4 Beyond Belief. Her topics of interest focus on the interaction of belief in God with Science, and with the problem of evil and suffering. Her recent book, Why?: Looking at God, Evil and Personal Suffering, won the prize for best book at the 2014 Speaking Volumes UK Christian Book Awards (presented by Pam Rhodes). Why? interweaves the stories of people who have suffered, with a practical look at some ‘Why?’ questions on suffering. Sharon lives in Oxford with her husband and two young children.

Dr. James Faulconer

James E. Faulconer is an American professor of philosophy, a former Richard L. Evans Professor of Religious Understanding at Brigham Young University, the former director of BYU's London Centre, a fellow and the associate director of the Wheatley Institution, and the former dean of Undergraduate Education and chair of the Philosophy Department at BYU. Faulconer received his B.A. in English from BYU. He then received master's and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy from Pennsylvania State University. His area of interest in philosophy is contemporary European philosophy, particularly the work of Martin Heidegger and late 20th- and early 21st-century French thinkers. He was the founding editor of Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy.

Dr. Faulconer is the author of nine books and the editor of four, covering a range of topics in psychology, transcendence in religion and philosophy, ancient scripture, and logic.

Dr. John Hoffmire

John’s background involves a twenty-year career in impact investing, venture capital, consulting and investment banking. John left American Capital as Senior Investment Officer when the company reached $1 billion in assets. After leaving American Capital, John was Vice President at Ampersand Ventures, formerly Paine Webber's venture capital group. Earlier in his career, after he finished his Ph.D. at Stanford University, he was a consultant at Bain & Company.

He teaches at Saïd Business School where he also directs the Impact Bond Fund, a $5,000,000 fund that allows students to learn through doing. He also directs the Center on Business and Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He serves on the board of directors of two companies in the media and finance industries.

John has worked, researched and given speeches in 93 countries. He was awarded the Darwin Nelson Community Impact Award for his efforts to help business work for more people.

Barbara Efia Howard

Ms. Howard studied Law at the University of Surrey and graduated in 2011. She then studied the Legal Practice Course at BPP Law School in London and worked for Lyons Davidson Solicitors and joined the Financial Ombudsman Service as an Adjudicator. She is currently working as a Financial Compliant Adjudicator for Lloyds Banking Group.

In Febuary 2015, Ms. Howard launched an organisation called Sankofa Africa at the Ghana High Commission in London. The organisation connects young African professionals with exciting work opportunities in Africa where they can make a difference in their communities. To this end, Sankofa Africa exists to facilitate migration of The African Diaspora back to the continent to help resolve some of these issues.

For many years, Ms. Howard has been an active leader within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and currently serves as the Stake Young Women's President, the regional leader of teenage women in the Church and its communities. In February 2016, Ms. Howard launched the LDS Women's Forum which connects LDS Women Professionals.

Dr. Brock Kirwan

Brock Kirwan is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Director of the MRI Research Facility at Brigham Young University. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2006 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Diego studying memory and amnesia. As a philosophy major in college, Dr. Kirwan became fascinated by the brain and the philosophy of mind—specifically with the mind-body problem of how mental events arise from physical substrates. His subsequent work with animal models of amnesia and functional MRI (or fMRI) has led to more than 35 peer-reviewed publications and two book chapters. His current research interests center around how the brain forms specific long-term memories for highly overlapping events and how the methods of cognitive neuroscience can be applied in different research and social settings.

Dr. Venkat Srinivasan

Dr. Venkat Srinivasan is the CEO of RAGE Frameworks and a serial entrepreneur. Venkat successfully built and exited eCredit first and then Corporate Fundamentals. He brings his rich academic background in finance and technology along with his entrepreneurial successes to lead RAGE Frameworks as its Founder, Chairman and CEO. The RAGE AI platform is pioneering the creation of intelligent machines in a wide range of industries and for a broad range of use cases. These intelligent machines are in use today in several global corporations.

Venkat has also founded EnglishHelper and Teranode, social enterprises focused on education and health, respectively. Based on highly successful efficacy studies with 50,000 students in infrastructurally deficient government schools, EnglishHelper has recently rolled out its reading and comprehension product to over 1 million students in more than 6,000 government schools across 13 states in India.

Venkat is an expert in knowledge-based systems architectures, computational linguistics and natural language processing. He has over 30 peer reviewed publications and two edited volumes to his credit. His research has appeared in a number of prestigious academic journals including the Journal of Finance, Management Science, Financial Management, European Journal of Operations Research, and others as well as business and news publications such as The Wall Street Journal. Venkat holds several patents related to flexible technology architectures. He is the author of a forthcoming book titled, The Intelligent Enterprise in the Era of BigData, to be published by Wiley.

Colin Williams

Colin Williams is a writer on nature, landscape and human heritage. He is a regular speaker on the human relationship with nature and his book Shadows in the Hay was applauded as ‘tender and poignant, a thoughtful exploration of our cultural estrangement from nature.’ Raised amongst the birds, sky and water of the Norfolk fens, he now lives and writes amongst Hampshire’s chalk downland. Ronald Blythe – renowned author of Akenfield – has praised Colin as describing ‘the landscape with a deeply personal precision’. With an academic background in public health and environmental science, Colin has worked as a marine conservationist and a wildlife guide. His work has appeared in The Guardian, BBC Wildlife and Orion magazine amongst many others. As a curator, he has overseen collections of new writing on our oceans, a major exhibition of wildlife art and has recently appeared on-stage alongside one of Britain’s foremost novelists, Adam Thorpe, in a live discussion on sacred landscapes.

Dr. Kate Worlton-Pulham

Dr. Kate Worlton-Pulham is the Executive Director of Education Weekend: Oxford, which she launched in 2014. She holds a PhD and MPhil in English Language and Literature both from the University of Oxford for which she earned merits of distinction. She has been a tutor and lecturer in English at the University of Oxford for Hertford College, Mansfield College, University College, Pembroke College, and Lady Margaret Hall and was awarded an Associate Fellowship from The Higher Education Academy for excellence and experience in lecturing and teaching. She has been awarded various University scholarships, academic recognitions, and writing prizes and has appeared in various journals as an author and book reviewer. Her doctoral work focused on the effects of turn-of-the-century science, technology, politics, and philosophy on British literature, particularly that of lesser-known modernists. She also teaches on high modernism and its players, early twentieth-century feminism, post-modernism, and the Anglo-American utopian/dystopian novel, 1880-1940. She has been the chief communications and training advisor for business leadership firms and has been the Director of Executive Education for Deseret Digital Media where she leads digital media operation training for media outlets in Europe, North America, and South America. Kate has three children, two countries, and one spouse.

2015

The Presenters, 2015.

Dr. Mohammed Hafiz Amadu

Mohammed Hafiz Amadu obtained a Bachelor's degree in Arabic language and literature and an MA in Library and Information Science from the International Islamic University, Malaysia. In 2002 Mohammed Amadu joined the Muslim College, London, to pursue a second Master's degree in Islamic Studies and was taught Shari'ah (Islamic Law) by the late Dr. Zaki Badawi.

Mohammed Amadu’s PhD programme was in Islamic Studies at the Al-Maktoum College, Dundee, Scotland and then at the University of Aberdeen. Mohammed Amadu's PhD work concentrates on tafsir (Qur'anic exegesis), the relationship between Peace and development from a Qur'anic point-of-view, Qur'anic Methodology, and a Qur'anic-based discourse among Justice, Peace, and Reconciliation. Mohammed Amadu has reviewed Hussein Abdul-Raof's book ‘Theological approaches to Qur'anic exegesis: A practical comparative-contrastive analysis’ in Intellectual Discourse, 22 (2) 2014, International Islamic University, Malaysia's academic journal.

Dr. Neal Bangerter

Dr. Bangerter is currently a Visiting Professor at Oxford University, working with the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain and the Oxford University Department of Orthopaedics. When not at Oxford, he is a professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, where he directs the BYU Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center. A physicist and electrical engineer by training, he is affiliated at BYU with both the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the BYU Neuroscience Center.

Dr. Bangerter received a Bachelor's degree in Physics from U.C. Berkeley, and received Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. His research focuses on the development of new and improved techniques in MRI for a broad range of applications. These include novel methods for imaging brain function and anatomy, improved physiological imaging of cartilage deterioration, and imaging techniques for improving cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Dr. Bangerter first came to Oxford on sabbatical in 2013-2014, and is now returning regularly as a visiting professor to help build an MR imaging physics group supporting orthopaedic research at Oxford. He is married and the father of three boys, the oldest of whom is currently serving a mission in Mexico.

Dr. Santha Bhattacharji

Dr. Santha Bhattacharji has been a member of the English Faculty at Oxford since 1991. After holding a wide range of college lectureships across the University, she has been Senior Tutor of St Benet’s Hall since 2004. Her publications are on Old English poetry, the Middle English Mystics, and monastic and medieval spirituality in general.

Dr. Sharon Dirckx

Sharon Dirckx is an Academic Tutor at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (OCCA). Originally from a scientific background, she has a Ph.D. in brain imaging from the University of Cambridge and has held research positions at the University of Oxford, UK and the Medical College of Wisconsin, USA. Sharon is an OCCA Alumna, and graduated from OCCA in 2005 during its founding year. She is invited to speak and lecture in a variety of contexts across the UK, including the 2014 Veritas Forum at the University of Oxford.

Sharon has also appeared on BBC Songs of Praise, Justin Brierley’s programme, ‘Unbelievable’, on Premier Christian Radio, BBC Radio 2 Good Morning Sunday with Clare Balding and BBC Radio 4 Beyond Belief. Her topics of interest focus on the interaction of belief in God with Science, and with the problem of evil and suffering. Her recent book, Why?: Looking at God, Evil and Personal Suffering, won the prize for best book at the 2014 Speaking Volumes UK Christian Book Awards (presented by Pam Rhodes). Why? interweaves the stories of people who have suffered, with a practical look at some ‘Why?’ questions on suffering. Sharon lives in Oxford with her husband and two young children.

Dr. Ian Finlay

Dr Ian Finlay is a Fellow of Harris Manchester College and Education Development Consultant (Social Sciences) in the Oxford Learning Institute at the University of Oxford. His Bachelor’s degree was in Social Sciences and his advanced degrees are in Educational Research. He has published on teaching and learning, education policy, educational management, and the education of marginalised young people and adults. He has a keen but amateur interest in Christian Spirituality through the ages. Before coming to Oxford he taught at the Strathclyde University in Glasgow for ten years and before that at Dundee College. For the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Dr Finlay served a mission in New Zealand and has served as Branch President, on Stake Presidencies, bishoprics and in many other callings. He is currently the Church's representative on the Oxford Council of Faiths and, with his wife, is serving as a Ward Member and Leadership Support Missionary.

Dr. Darin Gates

Darin Gates earned a BA in Philosophy at BYU and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Villanova University. He now teaches philosophy at BYU and is also a visiting fellow with the Wheatley Institute. He specializes in Normative Ethics & Moral Psychology, Kantian ethics, Business Ethics, as well as Phenomenology. He has a chapter in the Routledge Companion to Business Ethics, coming out this year (co-authored with Brad Agle and Richard Williams), concerning how to better teach business ethics, and he is currently working on a book on the relation between self-interest and moral obligation. He is married to Heather Spencer Gates, and they have eight children.

Dr. Ronan Head

Ronan James Head has a BA (First Class) from the University of Birmingham, an MPhil from the University of Oxford, and a PhD (in Near Eastern Studies) from the Johns Hopkins University. He is currently Head of Religion and Philosophy at the King's Cathedral Grammar School in Worcester and a Principal Examiner for A level Religious Studies. He has published in the field of ancient law and history as well as religious education and Christian theology. In the field of Mormon Studies, he has been involved with BYU Studies Quarterly, the Maxwell Institute, the European Mormon Studies Association, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Ronan can also be found blogging at By Common Consent or walking the various pilgrim routes of Europe

Dr. John Hoffmire

John’s background involves a twenty-year career in impact investing, venture capital, consulting and investment banking. John left American Capital as Senior Investment Officer when the company reached $1 billion in assets. After leaving American Capital, John was Vice President at Ampersand Ventures, formerly Paine Webber's venture capital group. Earlier in his career, after he finished his Ph.D. at Stanford University, he was a consultant at Bain & Company.

He teaches at Saïd Business School where he also directs the Impact Bond Fund, a $5,000,000 fund that allows students to learn through doing. He also directs the Center on Business and Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He serves on the board of directors of two companies in the media and finance industries.

John has worked, researched and given speeches in 93 countries. He was awarded the Darwin Nelson Community Impact Award for his efforts to help business work for more people.

Dr. James Holt

James Holt is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Education and PGCE Secondary Programme Leader at the University of Chester, UK. He holds a PhD in Mormon theology focussing on a theological underpinning for inter-faith relationships from the University of Liverpool, and is the author of Religious Education in the Secondary School (Routledge, 2015), and of Towards a Latter-day Saint Theology of Religions (Greg Kofford, 2015). He researches in the areas of Mormon theology and practice, Religious Education, the interface between religion and education, and religion in fantasy literature. Prior to his work at Chester James was a Secondary School RE teacher for twelve years.

Dr. Brock Kirwan

Brock Kirwan is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies how the brain forms and retains long-term memories. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2006 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Associate Director of the MRI Research Facility at Brigham Young University.

Lisa Pearce

Lisa Pearce is CEO at Open Doors UK and Ireland. Lisa began her career as a graduate trainee at Reuters where she eventually became product manager for UK and Ireland equity markets. There followed various management roles at the NHS and in telecoms, leading to Head of Negotiations and Development at a major telecoms company.

In 2006, Lisa was asked to join the Board of Open Doors, because of her background in Business Development. Lisa joined the staff team in 2009, moving to COO and then Deputy CEO, and in December 2014 was appointed to the role of CEO. Lisa is passionate about mission, mercy and justice and connecting the global church.

Lisa blogs for the Huffington Post, is a regular speaker on BBC Radio and is a Trustee for Christians Against Poverty.

Lisa lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and three children.

Dr. Kate Worlton Pulham

Dr. Kate Worlton-Pulham is the Executive Director of Education Weekend 2015: Oxford. She holds a DPhil and MPhil in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford for which she earned merits of distinction. She has been a tutor and lecturer in English at the University of Oxford for Hertford College, Mansfield College, University College, Pembroke College, and Lady Margaret Hall and was awarded an Associate Fellowship from The Higher Education Academy. She has been awarded various University scholarships, academic recognitions, and writing prizes and has appeared in various journals as an author and book reviewer. Her doctoral work focused on the effects of turn-of-the-century science, technology, politics, and philosophy on British literature, particularly that of lesser-known modernists. She also teaches on high modernism and its players, early twentieth-century feminism, post-modernism, and the Anglo-American utopian/dystopian novel, 1880-1940. She is currently the Executive Instruction Director for Deseret Digital Media where she has advised on digital media operation training for media outlets in Europe, North America, and South America. Kate has three children, two countries, and one spouse.

Dr. Aaron Reeves

Aaron Reeves has a Ph.D in Applied Social and Economic Research and is currently a senior research fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. His research is focused on social inequality and his work draws on public health, culture sociology, and political economy. He has published on the mass media's influence on social attitudes, the effect of social class on cultural tastes, and the impact of the recent economic crisis on health and well-being.

Matthew Sanders

Matthew Sanders studied economics at Brigham Young University and business and political economy at Harvard University. He is a Senior Director at Deseret Digital Media where he oversees DDM's Publisher Solutions, which licenses content, technology, and advertising services into 400 markets in the US, Latin America and Europe. Matt also sits on the leadership team of the Deseret News, and has written a column entitled, "Reframing the Debate." In 2014 he was appointed Chairman of the Press Institute, and a Director of the Inter-American Press Association, which seeks to strengthen freedom of expression throughout the Americas. Matt also regularly speaks at media industry conferences and training events. He has a wife and four children and enjoys reading, skiing, running, biking, local church service and college sports.

Rabbi Norman Solomon

Norman Solomon was born in Cardiff in 1933, and educated there and at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He served as rabbi to Orthodox Congregations in Manchester, Liverpool and London before founding, in 1983, the Centre for the Study of Judaism and Jewish/Christian Relations at the Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham. Fellow in Modern Jewish Thought at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies from 1995-98, he is a member of Wolfson College, Oxford, and of the Oxford University Teaching and Research Unit in Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He is a Past President of the British Association for Jewish Studies, Vice President of the World Congress of Faiths, and a Patron of the International Interfaith Centre, and has participated in Interfaith Dialogue in over twenty countries on five continents. His publications include Judaism and World Religion (1991), The Analytic Movement: Hayyim Soloveitchik and his School (1993), A Very Short Introduction to Judaism (1996, 20142), Historical Dictionary of Judaism (1998, 20153), The Talmud: A Selection (2009), and Torah from Heaven (2012), as well as numerous articles and reviews.

Satyadasa David Waterston

Satyadasa David Waterston studied law at Keble College, Oxford. He has twenty years experience of living in and around Buddhist communities and ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 2011. He teaches mindfulness-based approaches to health and well being at Breathing Space London, leads Buddhist study in a variety of contexts, gives public talks and has lead retreats. He is the Buddhist faith tutor at Eton College and a qualified solicitor. A particular interest is the cross over between wild law or ‘Earth law’ and conceptions of nature and mind.

Dr. Julianne Weis

Dr. Julianne Weis has just recently completed a D.Phil at Oxford in History of Medicine, researching the history of women, childbirth practices, and public health in Ethiopia. She is currently a Senior Research Associate at Anthrologica, a consultancy firm which uses the principles of applied anthropology to help improve global health policy and practice. She also holds an M.Sc in African Studies from Oxford, and has six years professional experience working at both UNICEF, the UNFPA, and other NGOs on issues of maternal and child health in over a dozen countries in South America and sub-Saharan Africa.

Revd. Dr. Ralph S. Werrell

Revd. Dr. Ralph S. Werrell qualified as an engineer before going to Theological College and became a Church of England clergyman. After he retired, he obtained his doctorate from the University of Hull (2002) on "The Theology of William Tyndale". He is an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Birmingham.

He has had three books published by James Clarke & Co., Cambridge. The Theology of William Tyndale, 2006; The Roots of William Tyndale's Theology, 2013; and, The Blood of Christ in the Theology of William Tyndale, 2015.

He has linked Tyndale to John Wyclif, and is now working on the claim that Tyndale is "the Father of English Puritanism".

The Programme, 2015.

The programme of Education Weekend 2015 is inspired by the method of learning at this ancient University: learning will occur via lectures, panels, seminars, and tutorial discussions. Each will follow The Tradition of Enquiry. To optimize your learning experience, you are also invited to prepare by looking at the pre-readings made available here by some presenters. Below is the three-day programme. Full conference or single-day registration is available.

Optional Pre-readings and other Prep Material, 2015.

If you'd like to come to Education Weekend 2015: Oxford having looked into some of the topics to be discussed, you are invited to follow these links to read and watch this preparatory material, made available by the presenters themselves. If you'd like just to come, learn, and discuss, you are most welcome.